Susan Shwartz

Susan Shwartz (born December 31, 1949) is an American author. She received her B.A. in English from Mount Holyoke College in 1972 and a PhD in English from Harvard University. Shwartz's Heirs to Byzantium trilogy – Byzantium's Crown (1987), The Woman of Flowers (1987) and Queensblade (1988) is an alternate history series. The Heirs to Byzantium novels are set in a world where Marc Antony defeats Octavius in the Battle of Actium, and joins with Cleopatra to make Byzantium capital of the Roman Empire. Shwartz's novel The Grail of Hearts (1992) is a fantasy that features the Holy Grail. It also features a sympathetic version of Kundry from Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal; Shwart's Kundry is depicted as a version of the Wandering Jew. Shwartz has published several novels and sixty short stories.